Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Development: A Review and Multilevel Causal Mechanism Framework

Entrepreneurship for sustainable development is a multilevel phenomenon connecting social, environmental and economic dimensions between entrepreneurial processes, market transformations, as well as large-scale societal developments. While previous articles on social, environmental, and sustainable entrepreneurship have advanced our understanding on processes of discovery, creation, and exploitation of sustainability-oriented opportunities, the links between contextual influences on venture development and transformational outcomes at multiple levels are only partially captured in extant frameworks. Drawing out causal mechanisms with a systematic review, this article proposes a multilevel framework for linking mechanisms in existing literature and proposing future research on entrepreneurship for sustainable development.